Wisdom of a Western Mom Prepare for everything you ever thought about parenting to be flipped on its head. Mama Marlaine advocates: Retiring "Children Learn What They Live". Retiring Academic Principles of Right/Wrong, Perfect/Imperfect Retiring the term "Therapy" for education in interpersonal communication. Retiring Normal Retiring the view of "Parents Raising Humanity".

Kissing The Mirror

Raising Humanity in the Twenty-first CenturyBy Mama Marlaine

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2012 Mama Marlaine
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-5107-4

Contents

Section One The Mandatory Curriculum..............................1Chapter One The Assignments.......................................3Chapter Two Curriculum Scholars...................................14Chapter Three Torch Bearers.......................................16Chapter Four Baby, You Were Born This Way.........................18Chapter Five Mandatory Matters....................................25Section Two Algebra and Apples....................................31Chapter Six Heart Surgery with a Chainsaw.........................33Chapter Seven Failure.............................................36Chapter Eight Difficult...........................................39Chapter Nine Graduation...........................................41Chapter Ten Learning..............................................42Section Three The Life Skills Report Card.........................47Chapter Eleven The Life Skills Report Card........................49Chapter Twelve Personal Care......................................56Chapter Thirteen Organizational Skills............................65Chapter Fourteen Respect for Self and Others......................68Chapter Fifteen Communication & Social Skills.....................77Section Four The Change...........................................95Chapter Sixteen Andragogy.........................................97Chapter Seventeen Billy's Heart...................................100Chapter Eighteen Coffee Beans.....................................103Chapter Nineteen Agape............................................104Chapter Twenty Occupy or Exemplify?...............................106

Chapter One

The Assignments

When you were born, you arrived hard-wired with two assignments. Nothing you have ever been – or will be – asked to do is of greater significance than these assignments. Consciously or unconsciously, you have worked on these assignments every day of your life, every hour, every minute – you work on them even when you are sleeping. You will continue to work on them every day until you die.

Your proficiency with these assignments determines your health and well being, the quality of your relationships with colleagues, friends, and family, the quality of your relationship with yourself, and whether or not you leave this planet a better place than when you arrived.

Do you know what they are?

You are not alone. Every individual has the same two assignments. Up until now, you may have underestimated the significance of these assignments. You may have undervalued the benefits of education and guidance from qualified teachers. You may even have been told you were ill-equipped for these assignments – or destined for failure. In private moments, you might believe there is something permanently wrong with you.

This is not true. You were born exceedingly well-equipped to excel with the two assignments you were given and, with proper education and encouragement, you will. Central to success is being aware of the assignments and having able teachers. Central to success is a willingness to be humble and welcome a picture of yourself larger than the one you presently envision.

Welcome to The Mandatory Curriculum

The First Assignment ...

The first assignment in The Mandatory Curriculum is to live. That sounds simple enough doesn't it, a bit like permitting your heart to beat? Please pause a moment, however, and look at this assignment more closely. What does the low end of living, survival, entail? Who do you know that is surviving? What are their circumstances?

Now consider what the high end of living, thriving and living to your maximum potential, involves. Are you envisioning fancy cars, a mansion perhaps? Who do you know that is thriving? What are their circumstances? How do you define thriving?

On a sunny Seattle morning in March of 1992, I awoke to find my wrists and ankles bound in leather restraints and chained to a hospital bed. Ten months previously, I'd completed a Masters Degree program in Public Administration with a 4.0 GPA. Four weeks later, I gave birth to my second child – Alexa Marie – an exquisite, blue-eyed, auburn haired daughter.

As I tried recalling how I managed to end up thus confined, a nurse entered. "I cannot believe I left those scissors next to you!" She exclaimed as she picked up said hardware and rapidly left the room. "What exactly did she think I was going to do?" I wondered, "Pick up the scissors with my mouth and stab myself to death?" "Yes," my conscience answered, "that is precisely what she thought. What did you do, dear Marlaine, to inspire such thinking in another human being?"

The first thing I remembered was a conversation with my youngest sister BJ. We were seated on the back porch of my brother's home. BJ was smoking and – although I was a non-smoker – I asked her for one too. After inhaling deeply, I told her I wanted my ashes spread over the Cascade Mountains.

Just one hour earlier, I'd laid Alexa in her crib for her afternoon nap and attempted to sleep also. BJ was visiting our sister Renee with my four-year-old daughter, Ari, and wasn't due home for two hours. My husband of six years and I had recently separated and we were living on opposite coastlines. Although I left him – desperate to shield our daughters from our ongoing arguments – I was deeply distraught and hadn't slept or eaten properly in weeks.

My mother was greatly concerned and took me to a doctor. He diagnosed me as depressed and put me on anti-depressants. Underestimating the depth of my condition, however, he neglected to educate me fully on the journey one takes when recovering from depression. He failed to inform me it is normal for some patients to feel suicidal in the process of recovering from severe depression, and what to do if I did.

I once heard suicide described as anger turned inward. Although I now think there are a million reasons people attempt suicide, and that physical health factors in far more significantly than commonly acknowledged or appreciated, that definition describes my experience well. Unable to sleep, I got up from the bed. Before reaching the bedroom door, I detonated. Without any forethought or reservations, I angrily began slamming through every cabinet in the house, taking all the pills I could locate. I might as well have been a bomb exploding.

Afterwards, an abnormal calm settled in. I sat down on a chair at the dining room table fully prepared to welcome whatever came next. The thought of writing a note to loved ones didn't even enter my mind. Then the unanticipated happened – BJ returned home. Fortunately she was alone.

BJ was my youngest sister and what little conscious mind I retained demanded I prepare her for what was about to transpire – so I told her what I had done. With great cool and collectivity, she called paramedics. By the time they got me to the hospital and pumped my stomach, however, it was too late. So they flushed me with fluids and my family prayed for my survival.

Developed countries, and increasingly underdeveloped countries, place an exceedingly high value on academic education. The general logic is this; the higher an individual's education, the higher the level of employment they will procure; the higher their level of employment, the higher their standard of...